The final article in this suite of the array of persuasive genres taught in schools discusses the persuasive texts that fall under the overarching banner of advertising. In a world swamped by advertising, it is seen as essential that our children learn how to advertise their own brand in order to be able to navigate the world of business and commerce as they mature into adulthood.
Until this time, it is also deemed necessary that children master the many techniques associated with negotiating what they want from their caregivers, and that they develop the capacity to persuade others of the validity of their own ideological perspectives and views. In schools, the teaching of poster advertisements, brochures, petitioning letters and multimedia advertisements serve these avowed aims.
Going beyond the school-based pedagogy that inducts children into this genre, this article digs deeper into querying the foundations of advertising itself and the underlying quality of the society that these foundations support.
A World of Advertising
Advertisements, of the material and virtual varieties, infiltrate all aspects of our lives. Their bombardment is far ranging and includes pop up ads online, through our mobile phones, and in the media. We cannot escape advertising: it is everywhere throughout daily life. On TV, in newspapers and magazines, on the back of toilet doors, at concerts, in sports stadia and on the banners brandished outside schools. Advertisements are on display on all public transport venues and on the trains and buses themselves, often wrapped in super-sized banners advertising a particular commodity and brand. We are confronted by advertisements as we go about our daily business, through the clothing, shoes, hats, handbags and uniforms people wear.
We may believe that we are avoiding some of the more extreme versions of advertising by muting the TV when ‘the ads are on.’ However, we cannot mute the vibration of what is blasting into our homes, nor what has taken up residence there by virtue of the many brands that we literally en-house. Which is why it can be accurately said that this genre is one of the most circulated, socially endorsed and accepted genres of society. There are even prestigious and coveted annual awards for the most enticing advertisements across a number of different categories.
In the last 25 years or so the quality, intensity and actual moving parts of these images have been crafted and designed to change in ways that are almost immeasurable to the human mind. If we go back to the previous century, it feels like a different time, a different space because the images then were mostly static. In much of that century we had newspapers, magazines and black and white TV. The current era clearly marks something far more intense, occurring both in advertising and all areas where images are deployed by deliberate design.
What Are We Accepting?
Given the ubiquitous normality of advertising, we rarely, if ever, query what we are validating as acceptable mainstream practice in marketing and business, nor what this says about the type and quality of society that we are endorsing and hence, building as our way of life.
Money Makes the World Go Around
Money makes the world go around…for many this is a cynical or melancholic throwaway line based on the awareness that material greed and corporate competitiveness are all based on securing a dominant share of the local or international dollar, a justification for the attitude of the all’s fair in love and war mindset that too often characterises the conducting of business without any true regard for the quality of products, or genuine care for the consumers that buy them.
Advertising, and its numerous strategies, can literally dress up any product and make it look desirable. The strategic draping, masking, and marketing with enticing pictures, cosmetic preening, colour, product placement, catchy tunes and repetitive, primetime marketing could, hypothetically, see a mere hamburger of questionable nutritional value holding the number one sales position across the globe. There could even be claims that such products display a social conscience and give back to the consumers through charitable works and perhaps sponsoring sporting scholarships for young, emerging athletes. There may be claims of supporting the environment by using semi recyclable packaging and sourcing raw materials with minimal environmental impact.
Whilst the underlying greed and intent to dominate and secure maximum market share cannot be masked, there remains the fact that these companies are the supply to a global demand for them.
However, advertising, with its shapeshifting, mesmerising imagery and sound, its unrelenting enticement into the acquisition of desirable commodities, the many ‘must haves’ that we are exhorted to purchase and surround ourselves with, guarantees that there will be an extensive demand for the ever ready and constantly changing supply.
What Are We Demanding?
It is worthwhile to take a moment to consider why there is a collective call and demand for a certain grade of product or service. Why, for example, is the demand or the call not that we purchase only from companies that display a depth of integrity in the production of what they are selling and, equally, a genuine care for their customers?
Have we ever considered why we are not ‘demanding’ or asking for products of quality?
And when products of quality present themselves, why are they priced to guarantee that 99% of the population cannot afford to buy them? Aspire to them ~ yes. Access them, no.
The factor of disproportion on which the economic model is founded marks this intent. We are all exhorted to dream big, but only a percentage of the dreamers will achieve their projected desires when it comes to the ‘luxury’ or ‘prestige’ brands of cars, clothing, holidays and housing. This mindset taints the quality of all products on the sliding scale from budget to high end, so that even any items constituted of true integrity and form find themselves drawn into a model that does not permit their quantum of product integrity.
With respect to many of our most fundamental products (e.g., tampons and incontinence pads), there is an undermining of their true, and even intimate, purpose. A glamourous emphasis and elements of fantasy are overlaid onto this integrity in those instances where the product’s promotion entices the consumer to attend only to the fact that beach volleyball, swimming and horse riding can continue during menstruation, rather than confirming the delicate nature of a woman’s monthly cycle. Nor is there a query as to how and why many become incontinent but merely the promoted attitude that we have you covered with no questions asked.
Integrity or Greed?
If many, or most, of the companies that we purchase from are based on the ‘bottom line’ of market share and the supremacy of the dollar, then in ‘demanding,’ endorsing and using these products, we become active co-contributors to the sustaining of the platforms of greed within society. We enable the economic model we often claim to despise. We become the poisoner and the poisoned all in one.
In effect, we allow money to ‘make the world go around’ regardless of the quality in which its circulated.
This is the quality of energy ~ the currency of vibration ~ that we are letting into our lives. It is what lies behind every product we buy and allow into our bodies and our homes. It is therefore wise for each of us to consider the matter of quality in terms of:
What quality are we ingesting and bringing into the body in terms of the food that we consume?
What quality of clothing are we wearing, or what energetic quality, is draping our physical body?
What is it that we are cleansing our faces and bodies with?
What are we drinking out of or cooking with?
What quality forms the energetic foundation of the furniture in our homes?
…the list is potentially vast and our consideration of it brings us to the fact that ~
Literally everything is energy or vibration.
Until we fully embrace this fact laid down some decades ago by Einstein, we will be unable to fully accept the fact that we purchase and consume vibration, and not merely material items.
The integrity and quality of any marketed and advertised product is the sum total of the energetic quality of all those who are associated with its manufacture, promotion and …consumption. All who purchase and consume a product equally contribute to its overarching quality. Without exception, we all operate under the energetic or qualitative law of supply and demand, the circulation of the called for array of product quality.
What’s in a Name…or a Logo?
A key aspect of this genre is the product or brand name and logo. This has become so normalised that we perceive it to be entirely natural, losing sight of the fact that not too long ago, there were no brands or logos, simply solo traders alongside family businesses and their lineage, with goods and wares sold at markets the world over.
Technology and multimedia communication now facilitate the modern practices of generating logos and brand names that represent the signature quality of each brand.
Consumers are systematically targeted to show brand loyalty and billions of dollars are circulated annually to ensure the attractive appeal and distinctiveness of one’s brand via the logo, the visual image that represents everything about that brand both materially and energetically. Corporate brands also deploy sound and music that boosts and magnifies the visual components of their advertising.
Again, the awareness of energy as the primary consideration, indicates that the logo, brand name and catchy tune, are more about securing allegiance to a specific and precise vibration. Chocolate is chocolate is chocolate. There are no differentiated cocoa plants that are distinct in terms of their biochemical composition. Yet meld this simple ingredient with sugar and dairy, attach a brand name and target a specific demographic and it becomes all about the brand and what it represents. It has very little to do with the chocolate itself. We literally ingest the brand quality alongside the biochemical ingredients. Many a heated discussion has occurred in staffrooms over which brand of chocolate is the best. This applies across the board to which brand of wine, milk, coffee, tea etc is also the best.
We are actually heatedly communicating our preferred energetic quality or vibration as represented by its name and logo.
Bludgeoning the Physical Body
So many brands entice and induce us to override the body’s innate sensitivity. Perfumes override the sense of smell; many processed foods override and bludgeon the sense of taste and the addition of sugar to these foods brings an unnatural hyperstimulation to the body. Moving figures in screen based advertisements entice kids of all ages to move the body in ways that are jerky and unnatural to it, establishing long-term movement patterns that are harmful and that set the body up for contraction and long term dysfunctionality. Ad jingles often assault the ears and either entrain the auditory sense to that vibration or cause the recipient to turn down and dull their auditory acuity as a protective stance against the ongoing assault.
A simple question in response to this sensory overload and enticement is ~ If it’s all so wonderful, why does it have to assault me to convince me to buy it?
Or, why do we accept this normalisation of imposition to run in society, and even engage in the practice of instructing our children to engage with it themselves?
The Factor of Stimulation
Could it be that what we desire and crave is the thrill of stimulation so often engendered by advertising and branding?
In our world, stimulation runs rampant. From the thrill of extreme sport like bungy jumping, to car, horse and greyhound racing, competitive team sports, racing against time in our day to day lives, we are constantly aroused by excitement and thrill seeking. ‘The thrill of the kill’ is a dominant aspect of this in many contexts and is not restricted to the hunting of animals, but applies also to commercial competition, academic competition, sporting competition, dating, winning an argument or debate, brand supremacy, political domination, one’s physical appearance, the flaunting of one’s goods and chattels, and in particular the prestige brands. Stimulation is woven into every aspect of the fabric of society. Advertising is one of the many ways that we ensure that it infiltrates the very fibre of our physicality.
Ironically and, perhaps, paradoxically, the inverse of this extreme stimulation inhabits the opposite end of the same spectrum – the movements of withdrawal. Many an advertisement depicts the consumers as having the capacity to escape life, the mundane, and any sense of direct connection with those around them. From mere chocolate bars through to deluxe vehicles, there are a plethora of brands that circulate the fantasy of escape and so many of us willingly go along with it for the ride.
An unavoidable question is: why are we so compellingly addicted to these movements of withdrawal and stimulation, ever oscillating between the two? Why do we allow ourselves to be the puppets of these profoundly harming movements that suppress our connection with our very physicality and our joie de vivre for life and others?
The Under ‘Lying’ Intentions of Stimulation, Withdrawal and Sensory Overload
The majority of advertisements imply, and have us project, that we will be able to do things we have previously only dreamt of and / or we will be able to say things we could not for the life of us express before we bought a particular brand.
Every fantasy, covert or expressed, can be achieved by purchasing and aligning with a brand somewhere in the midst of the global miasma that is commerce. There is a brand that will deliver any and all ideals of health, sporting prowess, sophistication and wealth.
Or so we are told, and sold, by the brand names, their logos and the advertisements. Almost all of this is communicated vibrationally. The audio-visual aftereffects that we refer to as ‘advertising’ are the tip of the iceberg experienced by the five senses.
Why is there this constant lacing of simple products with the incessant stimulation of fantasy? Do we really need an entire movie set of visual imagery to accompany a simple cup of tea, an item of clothing or furniture?
To teach or not to teach?
In light of all that we present here, is it not the case that, more than deconstructing the generic and linguistic features of persuasive texts, and in particular, advertisements, what is actually needed is for we teachers to present the essential significance of vibrational discernment in navigating one’s way through a tsunami of brands and their manner of promotion.
The teaching of this persuasive genre is absolutely vital in a society that relies on it to such a degree that it manipulates and twists and bends one into an orientation of demanding a specific supply from multiple competing brands.
As it currently stands, the teaching of this genre perpetuates the momentum outlined in this article, specifically, the promotion of one’s own brand. This takes the form of students designing something (a cereal box or a drink brand), with the written genre taught in this particular design technology context.
Teaching to expose the devices (manipulations) that are used throughout the world to entice people to affiliate with certain brands, is certainly a valid reason to teach persuasive genre as a focus of critical literacy. However, unless we want our children to continue to support a toxic model of business transaction that is clearly not in the best interests of us all, that rather sustains an out of control momentum that few, if any, can see how to arrest, then the focus needs to be on the bigger and truer picture of what is occurring through the medium of advertising and how this impacts us all in ways that are profoundly harming.
New Foundations
What is needed across the board is an in depth consideration of the extent to which our commercial transactions and their ways of promotion are supportive for all, or are deleterious, even poisonous, to our collective energetic health and well-being.
This is equally the responsibility of both the purveyors and the consumers in accordance with the movement of supply based on demand. It needs equally to be part of the remit of all educators and carers to present the values that support this.
Teaching the critical factors of awareness and discernment in schools will lay the more solid and true foundations for commerce and business in our world. This offers true life foundations for our young, when presented together with the accompanying values of collective responsibility that are innately part of such an evolutionary paradigm.
We then generate not a business model of perpetuating poison, but a society of wholesomeness.